This month’s Echoes Top 25 continues the roll of ambient music, especially in the Top 10. Sumner McKane‘s What A Great Place to Be is number one by dint of being the Echoes CD of the Month for October, but even without that honor and extra airplay it entails, it was already #4 the previous…
Month: October 2008
Reviews & Commentary
Echo Location: Bombay Dub Orchestra
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081029.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSA journey into exotica with Bombay Dub Orchestra You can hear an audio version of this blog with music. East-west fusions have been going on since at least the early 1960s when Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar sat down with musicians like jazz saxophonist Bud Shank and classical violinist…
Reviews & Commentary
Ancient Echo: A Return to Galaxie Cygnus-A with Robert Schröder
Despite titles like “Alpha Centauri” and “Fly and Collision of Comas Sola,” in spite of covers that seemed blown out of distant nebulae and regardless of music that, well, just listen to it, Edgar Froese always claimed that Tangerine Dream didn’t make space music. Robert Schröder‘s Galaxie Cygnus-A, however, is a space music album in…
Reviews & Commentary
Twilight of a Titan: Ravi Shankar Plays Kimmel Center at 88
I don’t know how many giants of music were still mounting the concert stage at 88 years of age, but Ravi Shankar did once again last night at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Performing with his daughter, Anoushka, who is substantially younger than 88 at 27 years old, Shankar once again enthralled the audience, taking…
Reviews & Commentary
The Real Story behind Vangelis
From the Vangelis list, I came across an alternative history of the Greek composer who scored Chariots of Fire and Bladerunner. It’s in the Uncyclopedia. I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover this take-off site on Wikipedia. The Vangelis entry scores a direct hit on the enigmatic composer who is praised as…
Program Highlights
Echo Location: Suzanne Teng & Mystic Journey
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081015.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSSuzanne Teng & Mystic Journey play live on Echoes, Weds, 10/15/08 You can hear an Audio Version of this blog, with music. If you were among the 15 million or so viewers who watched the finale of Survivor: China, you may have caught Suzanne Teng fronting the on-camera…
Reviews & Commentary
Brian Eno’s iPhone Music
Ever an artist on the bleeding edge, Brian Eno, along with collaborator Peter Chilvers has created a music making program for the iPhone. It’s called Bloom. Bloom runs in two different modes: Listen, which plays an interactive generative composition, and Create, in which you create each note that plays in real time. Each tap of…
Living Room Concerts
Lisa Lynne & Aryeh Frankfurter Echoes Concert Video
We just got back from an amazing set of Echoes Living Room Concert recordings in Los Angeles. We set up camp at the studios of Broken Wave Music and in three days we had five acts come in to record 6 concerts and 3 interviews. The artists were Suzanne Teng & Mystic Journey, Lisa Lynne…
Program Highlights
Echo Location: Fernwood’s Americana World Chamber Music
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081008.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSA progressive rock guitar warrior unplugs when Djam Karet’s Gayle Ellett journeys to Fernwood. (You can hear an audio version of this blog with music.) In an era of computer generated music where even the most folky, downhome pop song is electronically manipulated, a band called Fernwood wants…
Best Of
Echoes Top 25 for September-Ambient Leads the Way
Digitonal tops the Echoes Top 25 for September, and will no doubt be near the top for the next several months. But right behind is Marconi Union, topping their own record as the highest placing digital download recording on Echoes. October’s CD of the Month, Sumner McKane’s nostalgia-tinged ambient americana masterpiece, What A Great Place…